


Sunflower Summers

by parallelmonsoon



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Borrowers Fusion, Borrower Deceit | Janus Sanders, Borrower Morality | Patton Sanders, Burns, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26069443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parallelmonsoon/pseuds/parallelmonsoon
Summary: Collecting sunflower seeds was always a little risky.  But when everything goes wrong and Janus sacrifices himself to save Patton, they all learn the path to healing can be a winding road.(Borrowers verse)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

The sunflowers were ready.

Heads nodding, heavy with seed. More than the borrowers could carry off, a harvest that would help see them through the winter.

Janus tugged another free, wiping the sweat from his brow as he crammed it into the basket. Judging it full, he started lowering it down to the ground far below. He could just make out Roman and Virgil, and waited until he felt a double tug on the line before reeling the now empty bushel back up.

“One more load,” he told Patton, “It must be nearly mid morning.”

Patton's own cheeks were ruddy from the sun, but his grin and his freckles were bright. “Two?” he bargained, “You know how much Virgil loves sunflower seeds...”

It was hot. He was tired. He could hear the humans in the house moving around, chattering back and forth and slamming cabinets as they started their day. Janus had every reason to refuse.

Damn Patton's smile.

“Fine,” he grumbled, and turned away to hide the twitch of his own lips when Patton cheered.

“We're staying a bit longer, but you two should head down,” he yelled across to the neighboring plant, “Help Roman and Remus get everything back.”

Logan didn't bother shouting a reply, lifting a hand in a lackluster wave instead. Poor man was a sniffling, red-eyed mess outside, but a rare bounty like this needed everyone working together. Better to get it done than risk two trips out into the wilds of the flower beds.

Janus watched to make sure Logan and Remus made it down safely before turning back to the seeds. There was an art to getting them out...a pull and a twist just so, with his tail twined around a leaf stem for leverage. More than once he had to duck to dodge bees, but they were fat with pollen and posed no threat. The ants and aphids too were happy to share, crawling thick along the plant's thick stem. No, it was the spiders and wasps they needed to worry about.

Janus shuddered at the thought. He knew Patton's opinion on spiders (the wild ones, at least), but Janus held firm that wasps were far worse. Some of them would just eat you, but there were some that stung to paralyze. There were some that laid eggs...

He shook off the thought and tried to focus on Patton's humming. Both of them were panting a little, and Janus thought longingly of the cool water waiting in their burrow inside the walls. Just a few more...

The backdoor slammed open.

The shock of it nearly unseated Janus. Would have, if his tail hadn't already had a good grip.

It **did** topple Patton.

Janus reached out a helpless hand, his scream caught his throat. Patton plummeted...then hit the end of his safety rope with a gasp. He dangled by his waist, slowly spinning.

“I'm okay,” he gasped, but his voice was strangled. He'd have a fair few bruises, Janus wagered. “I can climb...”  
  
A shadow fell over them.

Janus scrambled to slide around the main stem. He pressed his back against it, risking one quick peek out.

It was the boy child. The youngest of the three human offspring in the house. The one who liked to **play**.

The sunflower was actually taller, and its flower bobbed over the boy's head as he stepped closer. Ants, Janus realized. He was looking for ants, and Janus knew what he meant to do with them. He could see the toy in the child's hand, glittering bright and nearly beautiful.

He was looking for ants, but he was going to find Patton.

The burrower still hung by his line. Silent and still, face pale, and sometimes staying motionless was the best tactic of all. But the boy...he was sure to see. Any moment, any second, he would...

Janus climbed back around the stem and out onto a leaf. He heard Patton's muted noise of horror and ignored it, raising his arms above his head and and waving them vigorously.

“Climb up and then down,” he called to Patton, still waving, “Don't...”

He knew the instant the boy spotted him. Those already huge blue eyes went wide and the cavernous maw gaped open.

“Don't look back,” Janus finished, and then the monster had him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read the tags please. I can assure that this story does have an eventual happy ending

The safety rope around Janus's waist pulled taut. The boy gave a little tug, setting the sunflower swaying and snapping the stem it was tied to. The leaf drifted down, a graceful, rolling tumble through the air.

Janus kept his eyes fixed on it as the child brought him close to poke and peer. He held himself stiff and still, holding his arms bent awkward at the elbows. Just a doll, like the plastic men with their plastic guns that the little bean left scattered everywhere.

He had made a spectacle of himself to draw attention away from Patton, but now he needed to be boring. He knew full well the games the boy liked to play with those little plastic men, but better a doll than a marvel, something to be rushed inside and shown off like a fallen bird's nest or terrorized house gecko. Better to be a toy than see all borrower kind put at risk, even if it meant...

The boy's breath puffed hot against Janus's face. Fingers squeezed until his ribs creaked uneasy. He was shaken, his cheek prodded with a bitten ragged nail. Janus clenched his teeth against a gasp and did not blink.

And then the fist holding Janus dropped to the boy's side. He was treated to the dizzying sight of the ground sweeping by, a smudged green-brown blur as the child marched, pumping his scabby knees and swinging his elbows. Playing at being an explorer, no doubt, returning from the wilds with a rare specimen.

Janus swallowed back his gorge when it rose and concentrated on staying still, still, still. He knew where they were going.

...Hhe was afraid.

It helped to think of Patton. Patton safe at home- all of them safe at home, snug and cozy in their bolthole. The twins bickering and trying to outdo each other even in the simplest of tasks. Virgil playing with Acorn, trying fruitlessly to teach the spider to fetch on command. Logan working through the Sudoku book they'd borrowed for his birthday just last week.

Patton-

Patton smiling in the sunlight, his cheeks ruddy and his freckles bright.

The boy stopped and dropped to his knees in a single jolting motion. Janus was laid flat on his back on a paving stone, the bean's hand heavy on his chest. 

All of the borrowers knew this stone. It served as a landmark, the halfway point between the sunflower bed and the roses. They would be ready to harvest in early autumn, their thorns and their hips, and Janus hoped the others would remember to be wary of the wasps. 

Janus couldn't see the stone below him, but he knew the black dots and streaks that marred it. He knew what lay tangled in the grass at its edges. Patton always closed his eyes when they passed, mumbling  _ how sads _ and  _ just terribles _ and trusting in Janus to guide him along.

Janus kept his own eyes wide, staring up into the achingly blue sky. High above a crow wheeled, a shimmer of shadow that only made the clouds seem that much whiter.

The boy's face blotted out the view, rising over him like some kind of terrible moon. Janus wasn't sure if he was truly cruel, or if he simply didn't understand the finality of his games. Even borrower children did such things, playing at lassoing crickets or daring each other to steal eggs from mother earwigs. It was a privilege of youth, to inflict horrors and grow up to forget them. 

The boy was fiddling with his toy, that sleek thing capable of so much devastation. The rim was silver, the glass it held smudged by grubby fingers. Still it would catch the sun, and the boy- he was practiced at his art. It wouldn't take him much adjusting to find his aim.

Everything in Janus wanted to struggle. To kick, to claw, to  **plead** . It wasn't dignity that stopped him, nor worry for every borrower who might be at risk if the bean child took him to his parents.

It was Virgil, who fretted and worried only because he loved so fiercely. Roman, with his brash, bold words and his vulnerable heart. Logan, who had given them so much with his inventions but who asked for so little because he still, after all this time, did not trust that it would be given. Remus, brasher and bolder still, defining himself first by who he was not. 

Patton.

Patton, who had taken Janus in after so many years of wandering lonely. He had never been put off by his snark, had refused to let Janus keep him at arm’s length despite his best efforts. Patton, who smiled in the sunlight. 

It was the thought of that smile that let Janus stay still as the boy shuffled to a better position. He could see the sky again, and the crow was a stark shadow gliding effortless. 

It would be over quickly, Janus thought. Hoped. The important thing was that he did not scream. There wouldn't be much blood, at least, to give the game away.

The child shifted again. Janus could see it now, in his peripheral, that deadly little dot. Too bright, and it was making his eyes water, but small as he was, the boy surely wouldn't notice, would he? He imagined he could hear it, a low threatening hiss, and couldn't be sure if he did or he didn't. Certainly he could see the rising smoke as some minute speck of leaf or grass smoldered.

Patton. Patton's kindness, how even that first day, when Janus had been weak for want of food and bristling all the more to prove himself capable- Patton had only clucked his tongue and informed him that Janus  _ was  _ coming home with him, no arguments mister-

Patton, who was ever patient, ever gentle, and who woke up crying sometimes, biting his fist against the sobs and brushing aside his red eyes in the morning as his cat allergy. 

Patton smiling. Smiling in the sunlight, his cheeks ruddy and his freckles bright...

The sun touched Janus's own cheek. 

Janus did not scream.

Janus  _ howled _ .


	3. Chapter 3

Everything happened very quickly. 

The bean child recoiled. His toy fell from his hand and clattered to the stone, the glass within exploding into a mosaic of tiny shards. The weight on Janus's chest disappeared. 

He rolled and somehow found his feet. His only thought was to escape: not the boy but the **pain**. As if he might somehow outrun it- staggering blind, tail thrashing wild and breath rasping thin. There was nothing in the world but the hurt, a pulsing, searing agony that ruined him, that stolen even the memory of Patton away. 

He didn't think about the child, or how easy it would be for him to grab Janus up again. He simply moved, one hand hovering his face, terrified to touch but also wanting to claw at the heat still smoldering there. A bow-legged lurch, and when he stepped off the side of the stone it caught him completely by surprise. 

It was more of a trip than a fall- the stone wasn't tall, but the grass surrounding it was overgrown and lush after weeks of heavy rain. The roots twined around his feet and toppled him, ripping a garbled cry from his throat. He wallowed there, and all around him were gnarled corpses. 

Ants, mostly, legs shriveled and twisted, exoskeletons charred black. Here and there more exotic prey. A giant black beetle with a hole burned straight through its belly. A butterfly, delicate wings crumbled and flaking to powder at the edges. A plastic man all in green, face melted to a smear. 

The sight of them helped wake him. Janus scrubbed the tears from the eye he could still see through and shot a harried glance over his shoulder. 

A hand. 

Reaching for him, close enough he could see the dirt clustered under the boy's nails and the blood blister on his thumb. There was a frayed bracelet around his wrist, colorful yarn twisted and knotted, the same sort of thing burrower children exchanged with their friends. 

Janus scrambled back, pushing with his feet and crawling further into the shelter of the grass. He could hear himself whining, high-pitched and pitiful. Shaking his head in frantic denial, and he knew it was pointless, knew he had seconds before those grubby hands found him. 

He bumped headfirst into a cinder block. 

Another landmark- there was a square of them, forming a border around a young dogwood sapling the bean parents had planted last year. Any other time they would have been easy enough to scale, but Janus was shaking much too hard to make the attempt. The child would have spotted him anyway if he'd tried. 

He huddled there against the rough stone. Nowhere left to go, and he had failed after all, after everything. Had broken, and the child's shadow was over him again. 

Janus twisted his head, not wanting to see that hand, fingers spread wide, wrist circled by cheery red and blue. 

He saw it then. The stone he knelt against had a broken corner. The next in line was slanted slightly and there was a space there between them, a shallow sort of cave where the earth had sunken down. 

A chance. 

He was sure it wouldn't be deep enough, long enough. He had to squirm in flat on his belly, sending pillbugs scurrying on ahead. For all he knew his legs were still exposed, and he fully expected to be dragged out and lifted high. He could feel the vibrations of the child's stomping footsteps. The little bean was calling out, repeating something again and again in an almost frantic tone. The pounding in his head made it impossible for Janus to make sense of the words. 

The shock was setting in; he was trembling so hard his teeth were chattering, and that only flared the pain in his face to new, dizzying heights. He could feel his heart thrumming in his chest with the frantic speed of a hummingbird's wings. 

And he was cold. So terribly cold, and that didn't make any sense. Hadn't they gathered seeds today? It was always hot outside when the sunflower seeds were ready. 

The seeds- Patton had wanted to collect another basket. Two, because Virgil loved them so. Inside the house the bean child was shouting. Janus tried to warn Patton, but the cold had worked its way deep and stolen his voice. 

He needed to tell Patton. About the wasps. About the graveyard in the grass. 

The boy- 

-the boy was crying-

Janus closed his eye and tumbled into darkness.


End file.
